Ties That Stress

David Elkind, Professor of Child Study at Tufts University, is the author of many books, including The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon.

In style and content...this book is addressed to the general reader...[It] seeks to answer the question: What should we do as traditional family structures seem to be crumbling?...[Elkind] thinks the solution lies with a change in parental behavior. He sees contemporary families 'stumbling' toward a new balance between the needs of the children and the needs of the parents, one that integrates the mutual responsibility of the traditional family with the freedoms of the contemporary family...Let's hope that Elkind is right.